Reading Aloud in Dickens’ Novels

My argument is that in response to the pervasive family and social activity of reading aloud in the Victorian age, Dickens composed his novels in ways that would further encourage and facilitate such practice. The focus of this essay will be Dickens' representation of characters' speech. This aspect is especially interesting since it highlights the relation between "fictional dialogue" and "natural speech." It seems that the more closely the fictional dialogue follows natural speech, the higher the level of orality achieved. Dickens employed explicit markers to simultaneously elicit and assist the oral reproduction of the distinctive voices of many of his characters--through phonetic spelling, narrative comments, and punctuation, or through a combination of the above. These markers illustrate plainly the writer's active participation in creating a unique possibility for spoken performance of his characters' voices. They also show that in the writing process Dickens took into account the "other" reader who read through listening, either due to illiteracy or because of a personal preference for aural reception. Although these markers have been mentioned by critics from a similar perspective,1 their function in relation to reading aloud has not been systematically recognized and studied.